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sasha_featherAs you probably know, I am one of a handful of people who run Access at WisCon. I've done this for a few years and learned a ton. Access initiatives at WisCon have largely been very successful and well-regarded.
Karen Moore recently went to WorldCon and was struck by the difference in the lack of accessibility there vs. at WisCon. She wrote us a letter to say so, and gave me permission to quote her letter in my blog. Excerpts from her letter follow:
----begin----
As difficult as it is to juggle 1,000 convention members through the Concourse Hotel’s [WisCon's event site] elevators, I have never seen a wheelchair or scooter user wait for 55 minutes to get onto an elevator at WisCon. I’ve seen that happen multiple times this weekend. It has never been necessary at WisCon to take one elevator to the ground floor, transfer to a second elevator to reach the below-ground floors, traverse a tunnel between two buildings to reach yet a third elevator in order to reach a different floor in the other building to go from one panel to the next. That is a frequent occurrence at WorldCon; in fact, one scooter user we spoke to had concluded that the best she could hope for was to be able to attend a panel in every other timeslot, because the lengthy waits at multiple elevators meant that it took her at least two full hours to navigate from one panel to the next one.
As much of a hurdle it was to move awareness of access into the forefront of people’s consciousness at WisCon, you achieved that very effectively, with announcements, signage, blue tape and multiple other means of communicating to the able-bodied that perhaps taking the stairs would not be a huge burden, and that it would be worthwhile to do so to free up elevator space for those who cannot move between floors in any other way. At WorldCon, there was nary a whisper of such messages, save for a brief blurb titled “Be Kind to your Wheel-Footed Friends” in the Saturday newsletter – and that was AFTER I buttonholed the con chair on Friday afternoon and gave him merry hell about it.
As challenging as it is to finagle a wheelchair/scooter parking spot in some of those oddly-shaped meeting rooms at the Concourse, you still manage to do so in every single one. There is absolutely NO awareness of the need for wheelie/scooter parking spaces at WorldCon. Wheelchair/scooter users are on their own to try to squeeze into space, move chairs around, and try to find a spot to settle.
And even though it is far from ideal for wheelchair/scooter users to have to use that little elevator to navigate the half-flight of stairs to reach the last two panel rooms on the first floor, at least there IS an elevator. There is at least one room in WorldCon’s venue that can ONLY be accessed if one can climb stairs, and they programmed events in that room in every single time slot of the entire con.
And finally, as much pushback as I know Access has gotten from within the committee over its mission, at least none of WisCon’s concom (that I know of) has ever seriously suggested developing an entire track of programming that doesn’t exist, located in a room that doesn’t exist, and then put the damn thing in the pocket program book, the online program and everywhere else. Evidently, someone in the WorldCon committee finds it immensely amusing to think of a convention member with no cartilage left in his hips struggling painfully down multiple escalators, across the tunnel, up more escalators, then searching through a maze of corridors for a program event, only to find a sign that essentially says “Ha, ha, gotcha, Sucker!” The con chair heard from me on that topic as well, by the way. His response? “Well, I’m sorry you don’t see the humor in it.”
-----end-------
WorldCon does have an accessibility department, but it sounds like it is not succeeding. It also sounds like, from this last paragraph, that the ConCom trolled its own membership.
I repost this here not to pick on WorldCon or to cause drama, but rather to say, here is a problem, at this covention and at others. What can we do to work on addressing this problem?
Initiatives at WisCon succeeded because of committed activists and allies. I suspect that each convention will need insiders on their con coms to bring initiatives forward-- that change will have to come from the inside.
At one convention that I won't name at present, I think that criticism around accessibility caused a very strong backlash, and that comparisons to WisCon only made the backlash worse. We were seen as condescending outsiders to their in group. My own perspective is that I have practical experience that I want to share, but, the criticism was not taken as constructive and relationships were damaged.
This is not my intention here. Better access improves things for everyone involved, and it is not as hard to implement as one might think.
Thoughts?
Karen Moore recently went to WorldCon and was struck by the difference in the lack of accessibility there vs. at WisCon. She wrote us a letter to say so, and gave me permission to quote her letter in my blog. Excerpts from her letter follow:
----begin----
As difficult as it is to juggle 1,000 convention members through the Concourse Hotel’s [WisCon's event site] elevators, I have never seen a wheelchair or scooter user wait for 55 minutes to get onto an elevator at WisCon. I’ve seen that happen multiple times this weekend. It has never been necessary at WisCon to take one elevator to the ground floor, transfer to a second elevator to reach the below-ground floors, traverse a tunnel between two buildings to reach yet a third elevator in order to reach a different floor in the other building to go from one panel to the next. That is a frequent occurrence at WorldCon; in fact, one scooter user we spoke to had concluded that the best she could hope for was to be able to attend a panel in every other timeslot, because the lengthy waits at multiple elevators meant that it took her at least two full hours to navigate from one panel to the next one.
As much of a hurdle it was to move awareness of access into the forefront of people’s consciousness at WisCon, you achieved that very effectively, with announcements, signage, blue tape and multiple other means of communicating to the able-bodied that perhaps taking the stairs would not be a huge burden, and that it would be worthwhile to do so to free up elevator space for those who cannot move between floors in any other way. At WorldCon, there was nary a whisper of such messages, save for a brief blurb titled “Be Kind to your Wheel-Footed Friends” in the Saturday newsletter – and that was AFTER I buttonholed the con chair on Friday afternoon and gave him merry hell about it.
As challenging as it is to finagle a wheelchair/scooter parking spot in some of those oddly-shaped meeting rooms at the Concourse, you still manage to do so in every single one. There is absolutely NO awareness of the need for wheelie/scooter parking spaces at WorldCon. Wheelchair/scooter users are on their own to try to squeeze into space, move chairs around, and try to find a spot to settle.
And even though it is far from ideal for wheelchair/scooter users to have to use that little elevator to navigate the half-flight of stairs to reach the last two panel rooms on the first floor, at least there IS an elevator. There is at least one room in WorldCon’s venue that can ONLY be accessed if one can climb stairs, and they programmed events in that room in every single time slot of the entire con.
And finally, as much pushback as I know Access has gotten from within the committee over its mission, at least none of WisCon’s concom (that I know of) has ever seriously suggested developing an entire track of programming that doesn’t exist, located in a room that doesn’t exist, and then put the damn thing in the pocket program book, the online program and everywhere else. Evidently, someone in the WorldCon committee finds it immensely amusing to think of a convention member with no cartilage left in his hips struggling painfully down multiple escalators, across the tunnel, up more escalators, then searching through a maze of corridors for a program event, only to find a sign that essentially says “Ha, ha, gotcha, Sucker!” The con chair heard from me on that topic as well, by the way. His response? “Well, I’m sorry you don’t see the humor in it.”
-----end-------
WorldCon does have an accessibility department, but it sounds like it is not succeeding. It also sounds like, from this last paragraph, that the ConCom trolled its own membership.
I repost this here not to pick on WorldCon or to cause drama, but rather to say, here is a problem, at this covention and at others. What can we do to work on addressing this problem?
Initiatives at WisCon succeeded because of committed activists and allies. I suspect that each convention will need insiders on their con coms to bring initiatives forward-- that change will have to come from the inside.
At one convention that I won't name at present, I think that criticism around accessibility caused a very strong backlash, and that comparisons to WisCon only made the backlash worse. We were seen as condescending outsiders to their in group. My own perspective is that I have practical experience that I want to share, but, the criticism was not taken as constructive and relationships were damaged.
This is not my intention here. Better access improves things for everyone involved, and it is not as hard to implement as one might think.
Thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 10:11 pm (UTC)I am hoping that the ramp can be changed next year. If the San Antonio Convention Center is anything like the Orange County Convention Center here in Orlando (and from pictures they seem to be kinda the same sort of general purpose convention centers) they should have several types of ramps available, including adjustable ones and one that can be bent with a little landing and put on the side of the stage -- I've seen those at the Disney convention centers as well. This, unlike, say, the number of elevators at the Hyatt at DragonCon, is a solvable problem.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 11:36 pm (UTC)The second response involved more random characters; the main program page is a picture, which means I can't enlarge the text, or highlight it, or change it in any way. My eyesight is relatively decent with my glasses on and I was *still* leaning in to about a foot from the monitor to read the names of guests. (I fell back on my usual response to bad design, Readability, but since the information was all on a picture, it didn't help.)
no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-06 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 01:47 am (UTC)At Convergence, it's typically a very specific track and they say in the program book that it's fake (you have to spot that notation, though). Some of the panels sound totally awesome, though, and really SHOULD be real, dammit.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 02:02 am (UTC)SO
AWESOME.
Nearly everyone at WisCon has their own set of reasons for loving it: mobility issues, or crowd anxiety issues, or a small child that comes with them to con, or just that they can get out when they're ready to leave.
It is seriously one of the most well-designed functional innovations I've seen in fandom and I would love to see it catch on at more cons. You do need security volunteers to remind people to stand on the correct side, but you know, THEY CAN ALSO get from Point A to Point B and this makes their lives easier too. (I don't know whether they had to add security volunteers when this got implemented, or if they have the same number now as they had before.)
no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 03:47 am (UTC)Re: looking further ahead....
Date: 2012-09-07 04:22 am (UTC)I would highly suggest that someone on the convention committee (or an on-site volunteer) walk every single route, noting difficulties along the way (including grade; there are some lovely paved paths in Riverfront Park that could be problematic for someone who struggles with hills.) Then make sure that hotels with access issues are noted as such, because it would be awful to be trapped by a single flight of stairs.
—B. Durbin
no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 04:36 am (UTC)London in 2014's planning to have the parties at the convention center, but that does mean changes for how you use space in the evening, and negotiations over catering. But we're Fandom and we know how to negotiate hotel contracts.
Re: Stagg Field track
Date: 2012-09-07 04:45 am (UTC)At least 10%, probably more, of the members present were cosplaying throughout the entire con.
Given those two facts, plus the fact that I lacked any prior awareness of Chicago-area fandom's fondness for fake program items, what precisely would lead me to conclude that the program about the Higgs Boson was phony?
When I read the description of that panel, I assumed that the panelists would be cosplayers with a lot of science cred to carry off an interesting/amusing imagined discussion between Hawking and Einstein. I mean, after all, it's WorldCon, and they do all sorts of way cool stuff, far more ambitious than a local or regional con - why would I conclude that was someone's lame attempt at humor rather than an actual program item?
The point is that "universal access" means SO much more than just wheelie parking spaces and big-print programs - it means examining every aspect of a con and asking hard questions about whether or not EVERY convention member can and will experience it as intended.
Humor doesn't play the same everywhere; what a Midwesterner finds funny will baffle someone from the east coast, and something that tickles a southerner's funnybone might leave a northerner totally stone-faced. So expecting convention attendees from around the globe to understand local humor is asking an awful lot.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 06:31 am (UTC)The cultural knowledge that Fritz Leiber is dead was quite clear, because he was Ghost of Honor. (We always have a posthumous honored guest.) But again, this is something seriously worth thinking about -- and asking con members about.
Re: Venues for change
Date: 2012-09-07 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 07:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 07:16 am (UTC)Re: Stagg Field track
Date: 2012-09-07 08:28 am (UTC)In a balloon debate, a bunch of people are assigned characters - may be fictional, may be historical - and have to argue for an audience why they shouldn't be thrown out of a hypothetical sinking balloon. And people get really into it - for example a Harry Potter one where people dressed as their characters. I once chaired dressed as Death, and someone else chaired several times as Anne Robinson.
So especially at a con, with the amount of cosplay, I'd just assume they'd got someone who could do a decent costume and would be appearing in-character rather than as themselves.
Re: looking further ahead....
Date: 2012-09-07 12:56 pm (UTC)Tape?
Date: 2012-09-07 02:59 pm (UTC)Which is an issue, but it's not something the hotel liaison was able to fix for this con.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-07 03:35 pm (UTC)It felt weird to go to panels and not see blue tape on the chairs in the front row, strange to not have parking spaces for scooters, rude not to have signs reminding folks to take the stairs instead of the elevator when possible. During one panel in the room with stairs, I got up to shut the door because the hallway was noisy, and there was a woman in a scooter at the bottom of the stairs, trying to hear the panel, so we left the door open. I was so furious that this poor woman had to sit outside. It just felt wrong. Access was framed as Disability Services, hence no one but Disabled people (you know, those people) needed to worry about it. Ugh.
I did mention this to Disability Services directly, and I brought it up on the Fandom's Blind Spots panel, but given the Worldcon culture, I am not holding out any hope for a WisCon-like atmosphere any time soon, although I hear London is taking this seriously for 2013. We'll see.